Athletic Participation and Seat Belt Use Among U.S. Teenagers: A National Study

In order to test the proposition that athletic participation is an antidote to adolescent risk-taking, a logistic regression analysis of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's l997 Youth Risk Behavior Survey was conducted. YRBS is a nationally representative sample of approximately l6,000 U.S. public and private high school students. Controlling for age, gender, race, ethnicity, parental education and urbanicity, the results showed that: (l) athletes were significantly more likely than nonathletes to use seat belts; and (2) the link between athletic participation and seat belt use was stronger for female athletes than male athletes.